Monthly Archives: January 2016

Despite late notice of today’s event, we had a magnificent turn out of 11!  Three of us went off litter picking, and the rest of us went off in search of paths to clear.

Before

Judith told us about a tree which had fallen over blocking a path below the cricket pitches and off we set. After some false turns we managed to find the tree and it was a mighty humdinger.

…after

We set to with bow saws and loppers, clearing holly and cutting the branches of the fallen tree and after half an hour we completed the job.

Invigorated, we then continued down the path leading to Adel Pond,  cutting back holly to clear the path for the next year or so to come.

From the pond, we set off up the Meanwood Valley Trail, negotiating pot holes and pools of mud six inches deep, cutting back encroaching holly and clearing a path which the weary traveller can negotiate without wellingtons!

After months of almost daily rain, we were blessed with a beautiful morning and a blue sky – though – mysteriously – snow fell from that blue sky!

On our way back to Old Leo’s carpark at 12.15 pm the weather broke and seemingly out of nowhere a blizzard arrived. However, the  Friends of Adel Woods are truly indomitable and loved it!

Six Friends turned out at 9.30 am to complete our nest box survey with Steve Joul.

Starting at the Slabbering Baby, we put a new nest box up there (to replace one in need of refurbishment and then made our way down to the Seven Arches, cleaning and refurbishing nest boxes on our way.

Again it was a lovely morning.

A tit nest, with an unhatched egg

Again, nearly all of the tit boxes had been used – by tits.  We were not able to survey one box because a pair of blue tits were busily flying in and out!

We completed the job by about 12.15pm.  The survey results will be published when written
up.

Despite torrential rain over night, producing streams in the woods where your correspondent had never seen them before – including a stream running down the path leading from the hospice woodland field down to Old Leo’s – it was a lovely morning and a handful of us joined Steve Joul at 10 am to clean and survey the FOAW nest boxes.

Taking an hour for lunch, we managed to survey all the tit boxes north of Old Leo’s and down the Meanwood Valley Trail to the Slabbering Baby, and all of the robin boxes before the light began to fail at 4pm.  We cleaned them out, gave them a spray of disinfectant (harmless to wildlife), and reinstated them.  We replaced a couple of damaged ones.

As usual, the robin boxes were largely unused, and the ones which had been used had been used by tits.

The tit boxes had almost all been used – by tits.  Disappointingly, none of the nest boxes had been used by nuthatches.  Many of the nest boxes contained unhatched eggs and we measured these to see if we could identify whether they were great tit or blue tit eggs.

Unusually, we found dead adult birds in two of the nest boxes – a blue tit in one and a wren in the other. They were only recently deceased and it is likely that they were using the nest boxes for roosting but died in the recent cold weather.

We still had all the nest boxes to clean out from the Slabbering Baby down to the Seven Arches.  See our next post!

Tomorrow being scheduled for the surveying of Adel Woods nest boxes, Brian, Andrew and David came round to your correspondent’s garrett to help refurbish half a dozen nest boxes taken down and replaced last January due to their need for repair.

An hour and a half of banter, and we had six beautiful homes for the birds of Adel Woods.